Ten on Tuesday: 10 favorite things about the 4th of July

Eh. Not my favorite holiday but....

1. The neighbors who were so awful with the illegal fireworks in the alley have moved away. Can you tell I'm a curmudgeon about the 4th?

2. Municipal fireworks displays. No matter how rinky dink or how over-the-top. I love finding a decent vantage point and watching.

3. The silly soft rock station that plays patriotic music to go along with the St. Louis fireworks.

4. Midway through summer, I like to assess. This year it will be a big pat on the back.

5. An excuse for a barbecue is always nice. Sometimes with neighbors, sometimes with parents or inlaws.

6. We got married on the 4th of July weekend 15 years ago. We know many couples who did the same (1st through 7th of July folks). I remember an especially fun one in Milwaukee with the reception barbecue being the happiest drunk I've ever been (and I've never done better and I've ceased to try).

7. Berry season is in full swing. I'm envisioning the triple layer cake I'm going to make.

8. I'm tan. I'm not a big tanner (I burn pretty easily, although I always fade and until three weeks ago, I hadn't burned in a decade). But slow layers of bike exposure and gardening has given me a nice farmer's tan. Better than that, actually.

9. 5 1/2 months until Christmas, everything still seems possible (things to make and do between the 4th of July and the end of the year: Halloween, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Christmas, back to school, and so on).

10. It's a holiday that doesn't exclude anyone (well, except for those not living in the US, I suppose, but they're not living next door or go to my school or parish or whatever). It is self-congratulatory like Valentine's Day or Mother's Day, except that anyone who lives here is part of that. Or they don't have to, but we don't tell them they don't belong. It's like Thanksgiving that way. You don't have to celebrate it, but one group of folks isn't saying you can't celebrate it.

Summer Currently in Progress

I have painted the dining room. I took down the old bought-at-Target-because-we-needed-curtains sheers and tab top things. I put the furniture back where it goes. I figured out which cat was liking the hearth as a new litter box and he sleeps in the bathroom at night now.

We've been to the pool once because we've been so busy. And this week it got chilly for pool.

Maeve has done a paint-your-own-pottery girl scout lark (lark: one-day, usually one morning or afternoon, activity). She has also done a lark at a rescue ranch. Sophia has done a cake decorating lark and a make-your-own glass jewelry (the kind you melt in a kiln, at the same place as the pottery) lark.

We went camping with the neighbors. While camping, we went canoeing. The girls experienced dark roads to the bathroom and tent floor slow seepage during a torrential thunderstorm. They survived. While canoeing, we ran aground once and avoided submerged logs and little bits of rapids. We all got very very wet and one morning went out for breakfast because the idea of fire was officially hopeless. Jack London kind of hopeless. And kids played and got along and had fun. Which is why I do this.

We went to the circus. Circus Flora. We sat right under the highwire and one of the Flying Wallendas winked at me as he crossed over, one of the bases of a 4-man pyramid. I was clutching Maeve tightly and I guess I looked as terrified as I really was.

Maeve played with Fay and with Delia. Sophia played with Jane and Kylie. And all the friends on the block.

Sophia continued with Irish dance. Maeve continued with tae kwon do. Piano took a 3 week break.

We picked strawberries. We picked blueberries. We signed up for a phone call when the blackberries are ready.

We played with watercolors. We signed up for, and the girls completed, the summer reading program at the library.

I weeded the garden. I picked carrots and radishes and the girls picked lettuce. I picked some early garlic. We ate garlic scapes. We ate garlic scape pesto. We ate cupcakes and in-season produce and homemade blueberry ice cream. I made a strawberry shortcake of sorts with a cool whip/sour cream filling. That we shared.

We went to a drive-in theater to see Cars 2. Mike almost got me to the tipping point with Dr. Who. Probably soon.

Mike and I started planning a trip to celebrate our 15th anniversary.

I made just over $18 at a yard sale, which was more than I've ever made at a yard sale. Sophia and Maeve bought most of Zelda's little stuff she had out, it seemed, with money from the lemonade stand.

Mike and I made the list of the unfinished house projects we need to get done. He repaired the floor of the porch off our bedroom. I will paint it this week.

The water heater died, but it was only the pilot light and I was able to relight it while my father coached me over the phone. Mystery as to why, but while it was out and we were afraid of the cost it would entail, we felt ok telling the paint estimate guy no to his somewhat ludicrous estimate for our front porch and front windows. I thought to myself, "I can't repair a water heater, but I can paint...." In the end, we fixed the water heater and didn't spend any money on either project. I took a nap to celebrate.

Bevin came over and we sorted all my art stuff from the spring semester's teaching.

I met with the school director and a potential nutrition candidate and things said during that meeting solidified, for me, the place I hold at the school. In a good way. The best way.

I drank coffee. I perfected my iced coffee with milk, such that I will never drink starbucks again without being on a trip and needing the caffeine. Aeropress. Love it.

I lost 7 or 8 pounds. Only eleventy-million to go.

I got my hair cut. You won't be able to tell.

I went out twice with Mike. I signed Leo up for speech evaluation. Maeve starts horse camp tomorrow and is doing a circus arts camp in July when Sophia's on the horses.

Summer is underway.

Taking my Girl Scout Stand

A friend (she can out herself if she wants) has a daughter, Emilie, about Sophia's age. And she's a girl scout, but in a troop that is disbanding for reasons I can't recall. Numbers? Lack of interest from adults? I don't know.

She approached me about having Emilie join my troop. I was hesitant only because Emilie was a year younger than Sophia, and so while she could be a junior with the troop of 5th grade juniors and 6th grade cadettes, I didn't know what would happen the following year. I suggested the other troop at our school, which was also doing a transition year of 4th grade juniors and 3rd grade brownies. Unfortunately, they met directly after school, and Emilie's school wouldn't even be dismissed in time for the closing of the meeting.

They looked into the troop at her school (the original troop was a neighborhood endeavor like mine, I believe). They looked around.

And yesterday she leveled with me. My troop was the one Emilie wanted.

Mom comes with leader training, camping procedures, and willing to work toward her lifeguarding certification, which is the one thing neither I nor my coleader have (or are likely to get, frankly). Not that mom would need these things to join my troop, but it was nice to know I'd be gaining a parent who had a clue, who knew about girl scouts, who didn't have strange expectations or would try to buy 1000 boxes of cookies on spec or something like that.

With Emilie, we will have between 14 and 16 girls (unsure about two of my returning girls right now). This is down from our high of 20, but this is a good number. Emilie's mom says she may be bringing one more, depending on whether another member of the disbanding troop can find a good troop to call home. Again, I think that'll be ok.

I thought about this later, how she hadn't found a troop that fit--either timewise, which is understandable, or interest-wise, which puzzles me. What are those other troops doing?

Mike says that not every adult wants to camp with a group of 15 10-year-olds. Not every adult even wants to go on a hike. Most adults want to avoid paperwork and insipid training as much as possible (myself included) and even though not all training is like that, I have to admit that beginning Girl Scout courses are like that. Leadership and training take time. Girls are members in all sorts of organizations and sports. There's only so much time.

Part of changing things, part of introducing the Journeys, was to ensure similar girl outcomes. Girls left scouting with wildly different experiences. The Journeys, as mostly scripted workbooks, were designed to rein that in. But when I told Emilie and her mother that we wouldn't be doing any Journeys, they clapped.

Is this what the other troops are doing? Am I going to be the last leader in the woods as the girl scout adults of my mother's generation fade away and everyone my age is working in workbooks in community center rooms they've rented for the meetings, having bridging ceremonies with cardboard props and never getting their hands dirty? I took a camping survey a few weeks back that was clearly feeling out the viability of the idea of having troops pay an expert to camp with them--essentially having the leaders come and drink coffee by the fire while trained adults do everything with the girls. Really? How sad is that?

And in other news, the Girl Scout blog I'm a part of? My entries keep getting the lowest ratings, way way lower than the cheerleader mom who loves loves loves the journeys. I laugh, because it's an anonymous 5-star voting system and I don't have any ego wrapped up in this project, but I wonder: am I alone in this? Has everyone else decided to just accept the mediocre, pretend everything is great, and scratch their heads when girls leave? Or are my girls different, too, and other 5th graders out there are actually happy to do workbooks instead of learning to camp and canoe?

Has GSUSA decided to work so hard to be so slick and marketable and have something for everyone that in the process they have become just like everything else? Just another after-school program. A scripted, colorful, $7 after-school curriculum of more of the same.

Well I'm not having any of that. My coleader and I are not going to flake out and cheer up and drink the koolaid. We will be the last troop in the woods. Which is where girl scouts belong.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 books I would recommend to a friend

A specific friend? Because many of the books I read would not be interesting to some of my friends, and so forth. I don't know if I could come up with a generic list of ten. 10 fiction books? I don't think so. I learned from book club that my tastes are shared with no one. I have my favorites and they're my favorites and you can't have them.

1. If the friend cooks, More With Less. It's the Mennonite cookbook that taught me how to properly cook beans. I also learned, for real, how to make a bechamel sauce. It is best described by the title. It isn't a fancy cookbook. It is cornbread and 3 meals out of one chicken and whole grain bread and women in denim skirts and headscarves making spaghetti sauce and the dedication quote: The full stomach says, "The ripe guava has worms." The empty stomach says, "Let me see."

2. If the friend is Christian and looking for direction, the Rule of Benedict. It is such a sensible faithful piece of writing. How to pray. How to properly work. How to make amends. How to be humble. How to prepare meals. How to discipline children. How to handle tools. How to welcome guests. It's all there. It's 1500 years old and it's all there.

3. If the friend is Catholic and feeling out of touch with her place in the church, In Search of Belief by Joan Chittister. Chittister takes the Nicene Creed line by line and expands them into chapter-long reflections. I go back to read it now and again to stay. Or I might just give the friend a copy of The Cloister Walk and leave it at that.

4. If the friend is young or has children or likes poetry, Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle. It's a collection of poetry loosely directed towards adolescents. It's the first place I read Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. And a whole bunch of poets I've never read anywhere else.

5. If the friend is feeling out of touch with his local natural environment, Peterson Field Guides. I started with Eastern Birds. and now I have Ferns, Edible Wild Plants, Eastern Trees, Western Birds, Butterflies, Caterpillars, and Medicinal Herbs. I have Audubon guides, too, and a few single titles like Roadside Flowers of Texas, but the Petersons are my favorite. Plates instead of photographs, so you get a general feel for what a thing looks like instead of a specific example. It just works better for me.

6. If the friend is interested in global justice issue kind of stuff, the series that begins with Material World and continues with Women in the Material World and Hungry Planet. These books are photo essays. Each chapter is from a different nation, with a typical family portrayed (number of kids, how much money they bring in, and so forth). In the first book, they drag all their stuff out into the front yard, the courtyard, etc., and take a picture, describing what they own. The second book interviews the women from the first book. And the third follows some of the same families, and some new ones, portrayed with all the food they eat in a week. I think these three books could be modified into a social studies curriculum for middle school. Seriously.

7. If the friend wants to learn algebra and other high school math (meaning, if I'm tutoring someone, mostly), the series from the late 80s/early 90s University of Chicago School Math Project is really the best. I know other people like Saxon or newer shinier books, but UCSMP is how I really learned how to teach math.

8. If the friend wants a fun overview of what to do to raise food in her backyard in the city, The Urban Homestead did it for me. It is swaying my opinions and changed the way I did my garden this year--excellently.

9. If the friend is pregnant and hoping to breastfeed, I would loan her my Breastfeeding Answer Book. It's a LLL publication and it is solid and evidence-based and thick with information. I would not recommend any other breastfeeding book, frankly. Just this one. And I want it back.

10. If the friend is a girl scout leader and frustrated with what's going on, I would recommend any of the pre-1980 girl scout manuals. They gave me back a sense of purpose and hope. Girl scouts cannot be all things to all people. It must be something to someone. And these manuals understand that in a way that the slick new publications just do not. (Although I am cautiously optimistic about the new ones coming out--I know they will pale in comparison to the very old stuff but the overview looks like they'll top the current pablum).

Maeve's Report on Australia

Maeve spent about a quarter (12 weeks?) learning about Australia and the oceans. She had to write a 3-4 sentence report on what she learned about Australia. This is what she wrote:

The big line in the middle of the earth, Australia is under it. The equator is in the middle of the earth. I do not live in Australia.

I love Maeve.

St. Louis Butcher

No, it's not about a murderer on the loose or even a good place to buy sausage (although G&W over off Kingshighway? Our new favorite butcher. They're an old-fashioned German sausage maker, which is an interesting thing all by itself (assimilation vs. holding fast to tradition vs. overwhelming population numbers) but the best sausage they make, in my opinion, is andouille, which of course makes little sense).

No, what I was thinking about is how we manage to mispronounce, or butcher, all sorts of place names, to the point that I don't even blink an eye when I learn that the Courtois River is pronounced Code-away.

I live within walking distance of Gravois, pronounced GRA-voy, the /a/ is a short vowel. When I lived in the dorms in college, I was a stone's throw from Vandeventer, pronounced VAN-duh-venter, even though it is originally van-DEV-enter, from Dutch. When I worked at St. Joan's, I was at the intersection of Hampton and Pernod (pur-NOD, not pur-NOH like the liqueur). Carondelet? Pronounce the T. Frontenac? It ends with an /ack/.

Besides the Dutch Vandeventer, most mispronunciations occur amongst the French place names. Zelda said this morning it was the German influence. St. Louis was founded by French but is overwhelmingly Irish-German. As the city expanded and overtook the French roots, as Zelda put it, they had to pronounce every syllable and sound. This doesn't explain Gratiot, pronounced Gra-shit, but Pernod and Carondelet make more sense.

The city is not all Germans and Irish now, of course--as you can see in the example of St. Englebert's, a traditionally German Catholic parish that is now St. Elizabeth's, an African-American parish. Populations shift, immigrants from Asia and Africa and Mexico move in. It makes me wonder how Eichelberger or Loughborough will fare as time goes by (my brother already refers to the second one as Luff-burr-uff). We've already gotten started on butchering Goethe Avenue: Go-thee.

Garlic Scapes: A Pesto Success

These are garlic scapes:They are the beginnings of a flower, a flower on hardneck garlic. Before I knew more about garlic, I would let them all flower and seed. Thus, my garlic is now a wild plant in my yard. But after I joined the CSA, I learned that cutting off the scapes served two purposes: bigger garlic bulbs later in the summer, AND these delicious bright green garlicky things. I always sauteed them with other vegetables but recently heard a rumor about making them into pesto.

My pesto has always been basil, parsley, nuts of some kind, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, garlic, and olive oil. So I hunted around the internet and found various recipes for garlic scape pesto. This is my amalgam.

Garlic Scape Pesto

15 Garlic scapes (I did not remove the flower heads), chopped rough enough to put into a food processor easily
1/2 cup or a little less or more of parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 cup or so walnuts, pine nuts, pecans, almonds (I used walnuts)--mild nut flavors
pinch of salt
Olive oil (more in a moment on that)

Food process the scapes, cheese, salt and nuts until sandy and coarse. Then, with the processor running, drizzle oil into the mix until it is the consistency desired. I probably used a little more than 1/4 cup, but I was pouring straight from the can so I can't know for sure.This made a bowlful. Most of the time I make pesto in a large production that results in many freezer containers full of the stuff. But I didn't want to commit until Mike and I tried it.Crusty Italian bread with sesame seeds, with a generous spread of pesto on top. Mike commented later that I took it in larger quantities than he did, but I've always been a garlic fan.

My garlic is Osage, a hardneck variety that obviously likes to grow in Missouri. I ordered it online from a now-defunct supplier, but I found it through a quick google search again just now. They claim it is a "redomesticated variety from a remnant colony at one of the principal town sites of the Osage Indians in mid Missouri." Let me tell you, it didn't take more than 5 years to make it completely self-propagating. It is good stuff. You should grow it (or another hardneck variety--am I right in what I've read that softneck doesn't produce scapes?).

Vell, he's just zis guy, you know?

Today I ran into lots of people in different stores, which was one of those reminders that I have officially met everyone in south St. Louis. But in specific, I ran into Jennifer (not her real name) at our local grocery store. I heard someone calling my name and turned to see her and two of her kids in the checkout line. I went over and we stood by the alcohol endcap and chatted a moment about school (her kids go to my kids' school, which is where I met her) and about that store and about mundane things. As I walked away, before the store manager threw me out or something for my barefoot kids running amok, I thought about the chat.

Not about what we said, but how we must have looked to other people who passed by. Maybe not. Maybe I'm behind the times. Jennifer is Muslim and wears a hijab (Jennifer, if you're reading this, feel free to correct me because, as you may have noticed, I am not Muslim and I may have the wrong term)--headscarf that does not cover her face, along with long black dress you have probably seen other Muslim women wearing. Jennifer is a convert--she has often said that people yell at her to go back to her own country and she thinks, well, my ancestors are from Germany...

Before I met Jennifer and got to know her, my experience with Muslim women was two different situations:

1. The odd semi-Romany immigrant who went to the parish school where I taught and got angry when we said we took all our kids to Mass, even the Vietnamese Buddhists. So her daughter was the only student in our entire (private, Catholic) school who did not have to attend religion classes or Mass or even music practice. It was a strange situation that started with my pastor (not my current one) asking "hey, those other schools have Bosnians, why don't we?" and continued through a comedy of errors as other Bosnians let us know ours were not actually Bosnian, who would not even help translate or be near them, ending of course when they robbed us blind (according to strict cliche). But the Muslim part of them was so secondary, or tertiary, to all the completely bizarre things about them, that it never seemed as important as, say, Ginny standing up at a faculty meeting and yelling, "They're GYPSIES! Don't you get it?"

2. The summer I helped out at the parish in the immigrant and refugee program, we would help with bill paying on Thursday mornings. Women would arrive, women from refugee camps in Sudan and Somalia and Afghanistan, with $700 gas bills from keeping the heat at 90 degrees all through the winter. Don't get me started on the agency that brought them here and then left them twisting in the wind. Their faces completely covered, talking through interpreters, the good-doing county parish folks with their checkbooks talking about them like they weren't there, the woman from Afghanistan, the translator, telling the nun in charge who deserved help and who didn't, the whole thing was so depressing and foreign and not the way I was going to save the world. Trust me.

The gulf between me and Samera's mother is wide; the interstellar void between me and the refugees sitting in the parish office, is completely unnavigable. The cultural exchange that would have to happen would be on the level of Klingons vs. Vulcans. There is nowhere for us to begin.

On the other hand, at some point Jennifer, or I, friended the other on Facebook. And I read her posts. Her references to Sci Fi, for instance. Steven Wright. Comic books. Links to funny diagrams about Star Trek. The Onion. And early on, I caught a reference she made: Blue alert, are you absolutely sure? It does require changing the bulb. I asked if that was Red Dwarf and she said, yes, that under the hijab she was just a giant dork (that is a quote).

And at that point, there was a shift in my perception that I hate having to admit but I will because, man, it really did happen. The difference wasn't culture and it wasn't sense of humor, or reference, or former occupation (she had also taught middle school). The points of contact between us exist in probably a very similar number as exist between me and any given mother I know at school or on the block or wherever. And it made me realize that my perception of the word "Muslim" had been equated with first generation refugees from desert cultures.

Over the next year, I watched myself change from "kid gloves around the obvious minority culture member" to not really even noticing. I've done this before, with Vietnamese students, at Black Baptist weddings and funerals, with Cajun and Czech friends' families in high school. You move from the unknown to the known to the invisible. Or as teaching was one time explained as four stages: unknowingly not knowing; knowingly not knowing, knowingly knowing (the best teachers, by the way, know how to stay here, even artificially) and then unknowingly knowing. You know, but you don't remember how you know, how you learned, or why that part is even important anymore. You just know.

But standing in the grocery store while our kids ran around crazy, it dawned on me that the assumption that we would have nothing to say to each other, me in western dress with a Benedict medal around my neck and her in a hijab, was probably pretty strong. And I was glad not only that we did have something to say, but also that we could stand there and make people second-guess themselves. Because I must admit, I love doing that.

Canoeing Training

My coleader and I took canoe training at Camp Fiddlecreek this past Saturday. We had a vague idea of what we were getting into, just word-of-mouth. It was run by the Red Cross but taught by Laurie, a Red Cross employee who is also a girl scout. The first half of the day was Basic Water Rescue, which about 90% of which I'd either taken as a teenager or had some sense of already. We took a classroom course, which in the past has been a dreary part of training, but it was actually entertaining and informative this time. I was pleased as we walked down the hill to the pool to do the hands-on portion. Like I said, I'd had this all before and it went well. The pool wasn't too cold and I'm a strong swimmer so it was really just a demonstration that I knew what I was doing. I do. The only thing I hadn't done was flip over a drowning person who had a suspected spinal injury. But I learned it and did it.

After that, we had lunch and the classroom portion of the canoe training. We watched a video. We took a test. Easy. But as we walked down to the lake, this sense of dread filled my chest. I can't explain it any better way. What have I gotten myself into? I kept asking myself. How is this going to work? My coleader has a lot of canoe experience, but mine is limited. I have probably clocked fewer than 5 hours in a canoe. I've been in rowboats, sailboats, motor boats, but canoes have always made me nervous. So easy to tip as you're getting in. Well. They taught us how to get in. We each had to solo paddle out to the middle, make a 360 turn in place, and then paddle backward. I had done these things before and it was ok.

Then came the part I was dreading. My coleader and I got in the canoe and rowed it out to a good deep part of the lake. We then, according to instructions, had to swamp our canoe, fall out of it, and then get back into the swamped canoe and paddle with our hands back to shore. Let me tell you, the first time you fall out of a canoe is not fun. I got a big old mouthful of brown lake water and more up my nose. Sputtering and gagging, I helped her flip the canoe over, found it easy to get inside a canoe full of water, and then really hard to STAY in a canoe full of water. But we managed and hand-paddled best we could without hitting other swamped boats. Getting onto shore, we felt like we'd accomplished something.

So back in the water we went. We were supposed to partner up with another canoe and learn out to tow them by the painter (the string attached to the bow). We were canoe #9, though, so we were odd girls out. We finally got someone to pair up with us to let us tow them a few feet, when the instructors called for us to watch two boats demonstrate the next skill.

It was raining. We were worried about storms. Things started moving quickly.

So Laurie on the shore talked the two boats through the next thing: Canoe #1 tips over. Canoe #2 helps them out by sliding Canoe #1 perpendicular across Canoe #2, upside-down. Then the people in Canoe #2 flip over Canoe #1, still resting across their canoe. They slide it back into the water and help the folks from Canoe #1 get back into their now-dry canoe. Let me tell you, watching them? I knew why I had that sense of dread. The rain was coming down and a false hope entered my heart: maybe they were having those two canoes demonstrate and that was it. Maybe we didn't have to do it. But no. She told the canoes to switch places to have Canoe #1 be the rescuers. And then she told the rest of us to pair up and go for it. Again, we were the odd boat out, and so we waited in the rain. Finally, the first group finished and one of their boats came over to help us, essentially doing it all over again.

I looked at my coleader. "Let's tip first," I suggested. I was really worried about my ability to get back into the boat and I wanted to be done with it. We tipped. Easier this time. No mouthful of water. We came up and helped our partners take the boat across theirs. My coleader got in quickly. She and the other canoe folks steadied it while I put my hands on the gunwale (I've learned all this new vocabulary!) and then tried kicking at the water while grabbing the thwarts and pulling myself in. I got a foot up, and then realized I was going to tip the whole thing back over. So I went back into the water, caught my breath, visualized what the demonstration folks did to make it work. I had to get my whole ribcage past the gunwale in one try, and then use that higher center of gravity to pull myself in.

And I did it. It was pure adrenaline, I'm pretty sure. A fear that I would be the only one still in the lake, coupled with a more genuine fear of WHAT IS IN THIS WATER??? made me move quickly and get back into that boat.

The next portion was easy, taking their boat across ours, flipping it, and helping them back in. Adrenaline still coursing through my veins, that 150 pound canoe just didn't seem like that big a deal. After they were safely inside, we paddled with all our might back to shore, put our canoe up, paddles, life jackets, and I looked back at the lake. Even though we had a late start, being the 9th boat, there were still 3 groups out on the lake working to get back into boats or pull boats across, and so forth. We weren't last. It doesn't matter on my little Red Cross certification card, but it meant something to me. I managed to do that task, that impossible dreadful task, in that dirty smelly water, with no experience, and I fell in the middle of the pack. I felt like I had accomplished something real.

We went over to the picnic shelter and waited for everyone else. As they came in, Laurie started reading over the Girl Scout regulations about canoeing. How many adults to how many girls, that sort of thing. And then she got to the swimming regulations, that Girl Scouts does not allow swimming in their lakes because...wait for it...the very good chance of contracting disease, namely, giardia, shigella, cryptosporidium, and e.coli. I still had the taste of that lake in the back of my mouth and Laurie said, "Don't you wish we'd read this to you first?" And I thought, yeah, except I never would have gotten into the boat.

We finished up and headed home 2 hours ahead of schedule. Exhausted. The bruises coming out on both our forearms already. Once home, I looked up those lovely little germs, and I have a full week before I'll know if I'm stronger than they are. I'm bruised below my ribs, above my elbows, and going to bed Saturday night, I had that rocking wave feeling like after a day on the ocean. But first I took a very long hot shower.

So Much

It's been a long week.

Mike was in Edmonton, which meant he had no cell coverage, which meant I was on my own, completely. That's not so bad except that it was a week of 95 degrees and up.

We went to the pool with Zelda and Noah, where I burned through my SPF 40 like it was baby oil. Holy crap. I am now peeling. It's the worst burn I've had in probably a decade. Two hours in the sun.

So the sunburn derailed several other things: getting the garden all the way planted and painting the dining room, mostly. But I did wind up planting everything except the cucumbers, which will happen today, and the dining room has 1 1/2 walls finished. I'm liking the sky blue after all. Of course, now to do something different with the windows. And of course the disgusting floor.

My sister came over on Wednesday and Thursday, thank heavens, and entertained me. We sorted through all the bits and pieces that went into teaching art this past semester--beads and shadow-making bits (sun-printing) and paint and more beads and an astounding number of beads--and also fixed her sewing machine. Then we went over to a bookstore when Catherine the babysitter extraordinaire showed up (I had forgotten our standing date, with Mike out of town) and we wandered around and I found a book about teaching watercolor painting (art next year) and a couple of books for the kids and that was all good.

I lost another 2 pounds, which brings me to 5 lost thus far in 2 weeks.

And then my mother-in-law came into town on Friday night because Saturday morning, my co-leader came over at 7 a.m. for the two of us to drive to a girl scout camp to take canoe training. But that's a post all to itself. Suffice to say, I was very happy when Mike got home at 9:00 Saturday night. Relieved. Exhausted. We went to church on Sunday as a family, including my mother-in-law, and Leo didn't make it impossible, for the first time in a year.

And now it is Monday. Time to go put on old clothes and continue the painting. I could get it done to day. It is possible. That would make me happy.

Perspective

So yeah.

I went to bed last night (exhausted) after sending an email to someone I've been corresponding with in an increasingly heated exchange and which has, for a week, been idle and silent. I sent a message to her and to her boss. I shouldn't say more, but after I sent it I had a change of heart. I still believe what I believe, but I think maybe I just can't care enough anymore. Can't keep the anger up, maybe?

So I woke up this morning, and throughout the early work-day hours kept checking my phone to see if she'd written back. No, she hadn't, and I didn't know if maybe that was best or if it just made me angry again? I don't know. I went back and forth while I walked to coffee with the kids, and then at coffee I kept thinking about it.

Then I got a phone call from an unknown caller. I half expected it would be her or her boss. It wasn't. It was a friend, letting me know that another friend is mysteriously ill. Her doctor was thinking it might have some psycho-somatic roots, even though the symptoms sounded alarming and perhaps almost classically like Guillain-Barre Syndrome, actually. But I'm not a doctor and so there you have it. Either way, very scary, and I almost immediately stopped worrying about my bickering.

It always seems to go that way. I get deeply entrenched in something that seems so important, and then I'm reminded that it is not. Whatever. Not worth my worry or time. It's so hard for me to walk a line between caring and being overzealous, voicing grievances and being bitchy, being helpful and becoming overbearing. I almost always require a smack-down. Unfortunate but true.

Exhaustion

We went to the Shrewsbury pool today as the first on our splash pass adventures (as Sophia put it this morning). Sophia and I, in strict accordance with cliche, came home with sunburns. Not too bad. Mine doesn't even hurt anymore. But it is still warm. Hers is about the same. Maeve even got a little pink. Leo, of course not. So I guess it's back to the ludicrously high SPF number. Bah.

I like the Shrewsbury pool. It is not quite so big as Maplewood, still two pools with two goals. Leo and I spent the whole time in the zero-entry kid-friendly pool with the lazy river action on one side. I got to chat with Zelda and first coax Leo to the pool and then drag him from it in the end. He was also fond of yanking my swimsuit top into the wrong positions.

Got everyone dressed and dry and home. Snack and then back on the road in quick time to Irish dance. Dinner with Leo and Maeve, a couple of good-news phone calls (for instance, my brother has a new job, whew!), and a grocery trip. Pick up Sophia, come home.

Aloe on all the girls. Storytime. Mike and Leo hung out while I wrestled the girls into bed (not literally: being summer, they expect a midnight bedtime, and they are wrong about many things). Now everyone is asleep and I'm up BEING STUPID WITH THE INTERNET. Looking up people I used to know. Being amazed at how thin she is, for instance. Or the fact that he's now a golfer. Of course he's a golfer. I'm also filling out paperwork for speech and language therapy and finding information on babysitting classes for Sophia, but most of it is just wasting time. Huh, there was an earthquake at 3 this morning. Didn't notice. It's going to be hot forever. Kinda knew that.

I don't even have insomnia. I'm just being stupid. To bed. I'm exhausted.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 ways to cure insomnia

Most of mine will not work for anyone else. Truly.

1. Nurse a baby. Prolactin, the hormone released when you do that, makes you (and the baby) soooo sleepy.

2. Warm milk. I know the tryptophan theory has been debunked. But it's not just childhood memory--we never did the warm milk thing--and it works, slam dunk, for me.

3. Number games. I try to figure out if, say, my address is a prime number. Or if any of the addresses on my block are.

4. Read a heavy non-fiction book (heavy both ways: physically heavy and wordy/intellectual) about a light topic. Don't read about war or famine or death or God. Read about numbers or words (Steven Pinker is perfect here) or light science topics well-explored (Harold Morowitz fits here).

5. Make lists of things that don't matter (in your head). Like a list of all the classroom friends I had through grade school. Or as many weeds I can remember names for.

6. Pick a category and name a member of that category for each letter of the alphabet. Birds, things in my house, novelists, album titles, whatever.

7. Try to visualize as much detail as possible about something boring, like the way the grocery store I frequent is laid out. What's on the bottom shelf on that side of that aisle? What's right above it? How much can I place?

8. Get up, avoid the computer, do something mundane and not mentally tasking. Clean out a drawer. Wash off the table. Sweep the floor. Nothing energetic.

9. For me, exercise. It's a perversion of hypothyroidism, and while most of my symptoms are completely under control, this one is not. I am mentally and physically exhausted after exercise. I am not energized. Ever. I want to go to sleep. Like I said, this doesn't work for most people.

10. Pray. Rote prayer--like the rosary. Knocks me out every time.

When last we saw our heroine

Or maybe should say something like "since the last time we saw our heroine". Some things that we've been up to:

*I've finished planting the garden except for cucumbers. I always plant them late now to avoid a specific bug that destroys them from the inside (squash vine borer?). They are waiting, and will not be in the tomato cage this year since the squirrels paid no attention to the ones that grew on the outside (through the chicken wire) last year. I have 4 "black from tula" tomatoes, a black krim, 3 ozark pinks, and a couple of other random heirloom tomatoes. I LOVE heirloom tomatoes grown in my own yard. Everything else? Whatever. Hybrid cucumbers are the only ones I manage to grow. Jalapenos, sweet peppers--I just grow what I pick up at the nursery. But I'm picky about the tomatoes.

*I took a women's self defense class with Master Warren, Maeve's tae kwon do instructor. It was so much fun. I know it probably shouldn't be. But it was. He kept stressing for us to go with our instincts and simply hone those to be the most potent, instead of learning new things ("wait, I'm supposed to hit you with my right hand, across the jaw, and then stomp on your foot with my left heel, ok, let's go again"). Zelda was my partner. She is more focused on technique but I think I'm probably a bit more, well, zealous. At one point Master Warren said I had decent instincts, and he saw where Maeve "gets it from".

What I found interesting was how much I'd actually picked up from the army captain who gave his Russian students a few pointers on street smarts; from the hypervigilant high school boyfriend; and from the fencing classes I took. I want to do more. Like I want to beat people up now. It was fun.

*The girl scout bridging ceremony, already documented here.

*I started biking again. And thinking about food again instead of randomly eating whatever. I am down 3 pounds in a week (I put on about 6 over the two months Mike was traveling and it rained nearly constantly). I would like, obviously, to steadily lose quite a bit more. About 40 would be a good round (sigh) number--and there, I've got 3 down. I know what to do. It isn't a mystery. And I don't have any impediments to exercise or healthy eating. I just have to do it. Gosh I talk a good game. Let's see what happens.

*Farmer's tan is well established. I'm going to a pool with Zelda and our respective children tomorrow. Maybe I can work on getting that less farmer-y.

*I have decided that Leo needs his speech and language evaluated and Maeve's godmother Kate, the speech and language pathologist in my life, agrees. I got the paperwork from SLU today. Sigh. All kinds of nit-picky questions about age of first words, first crawl, first steps. It's muddy. Everything was early but the talking. He has picked up three new words in the last day and a half: rocket, rice, and mine. So that's something. But no phrases and his spoken vocabulary is less than 30 words. Receptive? great. Follows directions. Hears fine. Interacts--not worried about autism--loves other kids. Takes turns. Pretend plays. And so on. He's just "My Son the Mime" right now. And it's time. (Gah, the rhyme! And again!).

*Summer is here. It is hot as hades (above 90 for a week), dry and sunny. Not too humid until the last two days. It feels like a St. Louis August, not early June. Here's hoping for a break in that. NOAA is not promising on their website.

*I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep. Really. Except for some kid camps and the garden and house, I'm free for a little while. Whew. Mike is done with the travel and life is beginning to seem normal again. I plan to do some sleeping in on a few days a week ("sleeping in" means "get up with Leo" instead of before--usually between 7:30 and 8:00, so not like back in high school when sleeping in meant noon). Soak up some vitamin D. Actively persuade my children to entertain themselves (the older two, I mean).

*We picked a ton of strawberries. Some got frozen in slices for strawberry bread later in the winter when strawberries are but a memory. Others were eaten immediately or sliced and stuck in the fridge for later in the week. I made a loaf of strawberry bread and set aside a quart for a layered strawberry cake later in the week. Puree went to the freezer for kids, and some went into popsicle forms too. Not the most I've ever picked, but probably a close second. Next is raspberries and then blueberries. Mmm.

*Garden is all lettuce and peas and garlic scapes. Any ideas on scapes would be welcome. Looking towards green beans and then to the tomato/pepper/cucumber/okra days of August.

That is all. Now I'm going to go read about watercolor painting before I offer to teach it for real.

Girl Scout Bridging in the Park

It was short and sweet. A potluck followed by a short ceremony on an old bridle path bridge in the park. We've bridged there before, daisies to brownies, but brownies to juniors occurred in a backyard of one of the girls, for whatever reason. This year we went back to the bridge in the park because it just felt right. We were a three-troop gathering, too, so it made sense to spread out under the trees.

I didn't have a set program, really. Had the brownies stand on one side and let the daisies cross over. Once there, they sang "Make New Friends" together as all brownies:


Then the juniors stood on the opposite side, and the bridging brownies crossed over to join them, where they sang "Make New Friends", but all 3 verses, and as a round.The juniors bridging to cadettes shared a poster about themselves, and then bridged as well--they are the oldest in this genealogy of scouting at our school, so there were no cadettes to join (and so they didn't sing a song). My coleader then gave me a box, which contained an old girl scout compass. And I cried. Of course. We've been doing this together for 5 years now. This was our best year yet.
Lastly, I explained the bronze award and we pinned the 13 of 14 girls who were there that night who had earned it.

The parents, represented by one of my long-time mah jongg friends, also gave me and my coleader flowers, as well as a card, which I opened later to discover a gift certificate to the archery store over in Illinois. That will go to very good use soon.

And I was speechless, and still am when I write this now. So many nice notes from girls and words from parents. It made me realize, even more than teaching, when I taught at least, what sort of role I fill here. My goal has always been to teach things or to have girls experience and learn things, that they wouldn't find in the classroom, on the playground, or at home. And upon reflection, I think I'm probably achieving that. Which fills me with a sort of gravity about purpose. Our plans, our hopes for the next few years, which girls stay with us and which fall away, how I handle the parents and the cookies and meeting times and field trips--it has all sort of taken on a sense of purpose that is more serious than I ever thought it would be.

I think it goes back to stability, my favorite of the Benedictine vows because it is so rich in its immediate and long-term rewards. If I'd been the leader for two years, and then left, or if I was taking on a new junior troop I'd inherited from someone else, or if my coleader repeatedly changed, etc., it wouldn't have this sort of feel. Because I have been in girl scouts as a leader now for 5 years, I have the camping training and the archery and next week I'm taking canoe. I have navigated the paperwork and I have seen all the crazy stuff that parents do in regards to cookie sales. I know how to pack for camping and I know these girls well enough as they get older to be able to rely on them for some things and dictate others (less all the time). I think the 14 girls who earned their bronze award, plus one other who may or may not continue with us, are poised on the edge of being able to do wonderful things.

I will repeat once more, just for good measure, that none of those wonderful things involve filling out workbook pages. But I digress.

It was a short evening, but it was kind of rich for me.

Oh, and I made this. I wish I'd gotten better photos but here it is: rainbow jello for our bridging ceremony (girl scout bridge patches are all different rainbows):
Because, you realize, I'm awesome.

Snakes, they love me

Maeve had a hard Memorial Day weekend. Well, she had some hard moments. Most of it was very good--caterpillars, hickory nuts with worms inside (this was a plus), fairy houses, a rope swing (terrifying to watch but she loved it):...rides in the 4-wheeler (more like a really really fast golf cart rather than a traditional 4-wheeler):...but she had some "I don't want to be outside, I just want to hijack your morning coffee with a game that takes at least 4 people to play" moments. And some "pick on my sister until she explodes and then get ordered outside" moments.

So Sophia, Maeve, and I walked down to the river. The road to the river is practically vertical. I'm surprised there aren't steps the whole way down. And it isn't a short vertical road to the river, either. They sit on a huge bluff above the Gasconade. Some visits, we don't even go down to the river, satisfied with the creek and with things to do up by the house, like horseshoes:


Cooking:

And playing games:


But I wanted to wear these two out, because they had expressed such boooooooooredom. It was starting to grate on my nerves. So down we went.

We got down to the bottom and the river was quite high. This rock is usually a huge stack of pancakes looking object (that the place, Rock Eddy Bluff, is named for) and here is just a teeny slip of an island):
The rock creates the eddy (also in the name) that splits off the main channel of the river and makes a little, well, swampy area to one side. There are canoes locked up along the side of the eddy, and I have been known to canoe there before. In fact, in 2006, my sisters and I canoed and had an incident with a snake. It was in our boat. It was likely a bad snake, although we didn't take time to photograph the thing as we were lifting it out of our boat into the water. I still look back on that moment and wonder how we didn't die. Seriously. It is one of the most dangerous moments I've ever found myself in.

So we were standing down there and Maeve, tired and dejected, says that next time we come, we should just leave her behind with my parents. Not going to let this moment end that way, I suggest that the two of them run up the hill a bit to where the paddles and life preservers are kept, and I'll take them canoeing.

Gulp.

I've never ever canoed as the only adult, so as I dragged the canoe to the little break in the bank where I could slip it into the water (checking for bugs and snakes and fishing a spider as big as the palm of my hand out of the bottom of the thing first), I doubted myself. But I needed to do something interesting to set Maeve's mood back where it belonged. I got them into the canoe. And I pushed off into the eddy. Maeve is shrieking, down in the center of the boat. But it's nerves and excitement.

Success. They figure out the paddling scheme quickly and we tool around the eddy, avoiding the main channel to keep from getting trapped in the current and winding up 15 miles downstream at the mercy of strangers with a cell phone. I teach them how to turn and how to change direction and it's fun.

And of course, I see the snake. It's a good 20 feet away, but it sees me. And for some reason, snakes like me. It approaches. I'm not afraid of the snake, really. I can see that its head is the same circumference as its body (it is not a pit viper, therefore not a cottonmouth). It is probably a plain-bellied water snake or some other dark water snake. But it's approaching. I know if I point it out to my girls, the freak out will be dangerous. I'm a decent canoe handler but I don't know about two kids freaking out in the same boat with me.

I have them turn the boat again, and I am between them and the snake. I tell them we need to get to the barbecue we've been invited to, and we should probably head back up the hill. The snake is still following, but as we turn enough and even back into the break in the bank so I'm the first one on land and can drag them up (as was the plan), the snake stops, as if we've reached the end of his jurisdiction, and heads back away. They never see the snake and the canoeing ends well.

Of course we have to march up the vertical hill back to the house, and my little snake-induced adrenaline rush is over. We are muddy and tired and the road is endlessly steep and long. But the snake stayed in the water and didn't bite us and we didn't fall into the murky water and all was well.

Snit

I think I love that word.

I was at a big box hardware store this evening replenishing some cucumber plants that succumbed to the heat while we were away over Memorial Day weekend.

It was hot. I was chatting with the cashier. I was interrupted by a voice I recognized. The head of the board, the one I've kind of gone after ever since a phone call she had with me that was the biggest bunch of smooth talking lies I've ever listened to (and I once had a fling with a man named Louis, pronounced Loo-ee, so you can imagine the smooth talking I've heard). She's a self-important amazingly power-hungry prig who was opposed to the middle school on purely "personal" reasons and was outvoted at the last meeting for good reasons.

She asked the cashier if she could leave the cart for a moment. The cashier nodded. I glanced over, she saw me, I saw her, and she walked away. I finished my transaction, and as I pushed the cart out into the waning sunshine, there she was again.

"How's that campaign workin, Bridgett?" she snapped at me, obviously referring to my speech at the last board meeting, wherein I asked a somewhat rhetorical question about how parents would go about removing members of the board. I also referred to the board as having a sort of perverse gestalt going on--the whole is less than the sum of its parts--and I blamed its leadership (her).

"Oh, it's working fine," I answered languidly. And walked passed her out to my car, shaking my head and kind of smiling to myself.

I texted another mom who had been at the meeting as I sat in the parking lot letting the AC start to work. "What a snit" she wrote back. I'm thinking flounce, but snit works too.

I am still smiling just at the puffed-upped-ness invloved, how she had to back away, think about what she would say to me, and that's what she came up with.